Watson Monologue - Blog Posts

Hi!

I know I've already been on haitus for a while, but well, I'll be even more haitus for the next week because I'll be travelling.

I've been having a hard time drawing anything. It's not that I have any difficulties that I can pinpoint. It just never seemed to happen. And it kept not happening.

I've been working on a new writing project, I want to say it sucks, but to be fair, it's just not what I usually like to write or even to read, so I won't insult it yet. It deserves it, though. It includes someone sucking on a raw steak. And a ferris wheel. And sad things because of course.

Anyway, enjoy this doodle that hopefully I'll find the heart to finish after next week!

For some reason I haven't been able to draw any cats lately. Catch me lurking around the house like a cryptid cosplaying a person.

I can't be bothered to update my meet the artist but I cut my own hair again and I can see my scalp for the first time. Yippee.

You know when you start to think "Aww I like you" about a character and then "Right, you're my favourite now," and then they die? It drives me up the wall, and I'm staying on the wall because I hate the "eh, they're not dead!" even more.

This is even more annoying because it was only assigned reading for a GN course, and now I'm upset over a dead pumpkin headed multiversal magic academy student.

It's not so much the character dying that makes me angry. It's that I hate being told how to feel. It feels like I'd fallen into a trap laid out by the writers; like they'd made me like this character specifically so that I'd be invested enough to be sad when they die. Mass produced sentiment.

@blackforrestpunk I'm holding you responsible for this

Look, I know I own a cat ears headband and a furred cat-eared hoodie, and I draw a lot of cats, but-- I'm not escaping the allegations, am I?

@windforkthewriter @t4z-0n-p4wz @greenfinchwriter @nalesnik-z-morela

tag game ✦‧₊˚⊹ ˖

put your name/nickname in the headcanon generator to see what you get!

✦ ‧₊ ˚⊹ ˖

link

TY for the tag, Kat! 🥰💕 @dreamingkitsunewrites

I have been called out 😩

no pressure tags: @teenidlegirl @yougavemeyourheartyouknow @mrsoharaa @catladyoftheyr @swiftyangx12 @greensagephase @fairlyang @mysteria157 + whoever wants to 🥰

I've been hyperfixating on a crafting project for three days now, and my brain is bent out of shape, I hope I can get back to normal tomorrow, we shall see if the fixation gremlins let me out of the dungeon

Thank you for the tag, Greenfinch! I'm sorry it took me so long, I have much difficulty choosing favourites. In no specific order:

Christine Daaé - Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux

Mina Harker - Dracula

Noemí Taboada - Mexican Gothic

Edith Sharpe - Crimson Peak (my Gothic is showing, isn't it)

Diana Bishop - All Souls Trilogy

Wednesday Addams

Mary Watson - Sherlock (until the showrunners used her as a plot point. I'm still massively disappointed about that.)

Bella Baxter - Poor Things (the 2023 film, I haven't got my paws on the book yet)

I'm feeling a lack of evil ladies in my list, and it feels too self-indulgent to throw my own crazy lady characters in, so I'm off to find some.

Open tag!

Thank for the tag @elvisqueso I love that you included Marissa Schurr because the side characters in Hannibal are everything <333 (also Rumiko Takahashi draws the most beautiful women 🙂‍↕️)

In honor of International Women's Day, list eight of your favorite fictional women from eight different fandoms, in no particular order.

Beverly Katz - Hannibal

Toph Beifong - ATLA

Dolores Abernathy - Westworld

Tara Thornton - True Blood

Dowager Countess of Grantham - Downton Abbey

Lucille Bluth - Arrested Development

Homura Akemi - Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Amy Dunne - Gone Girl

tagging: @cedarxwing @collapsingchurches @greenfinchwriter @littleblackraincloudofcourse @hopesapowerfulthing @sleepyfranz @ninoochat @a-grief-observed @daimiyamoto @brassic-bitch @coco-saurio @pesky--dust @tillitsleeps @suchawrathfullamb @oddlytenderstars @redpenbn @tayasui-mono @forthecriminallyinsane @hold-the-devil-well @supervillain-penpal @burnt-sienna-soup-ladles @renecatstuff @tonight-i-may-see @voltac @maleficent088 @resomated & anyone else who wants to do it 🖤

Fictional love interests, we have beef!

Guess what suckers, my application to be the lady lead in a novel has been rejected again. Maybe because I tormented the gentleman lead for wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans.

What do you mean the best I could hope for is an Armani suit?

Villain arc it is, then.

(In all seriousness, I have nothing against people who dress like this. What gets on my nerves is that there is only one type of "attractive" on the fiction market. It's true, "don't like don't read," but I'm having a hard time finding writing I do like because they're all copycats of each other - yet they all try to frame those leads as "special," "The One," "the Exception," "he's not just A Guy" - actual phrasing I've seen in an actual publication - and it just gets tiring and puts me in a sarcastic mood.)

You'll tell them, Pierce. Show them those, um, ballet flats.

ARGH.

Original posts: Nosferatu here and Lescat here.

Thank all of you who pressed the little funny buttons!

Guess who’s back

Back again

Rayz/Skitt is back

Tell your friends

I'm not sure if you want my friends to know you

They live in my walls. They have possibly been Undead for years. They are very strange and make me stranger. I'm going to have to phrase this news very carefully so they don't take it as a dinner gong.

*Coughs weird humour out of my system like an exorcism*

Can't help it, my mum doesn't call me Wednesday Addams for no reason. Welcome back, Rayz!!

Okay, so, my desk collapsed three times today, and OF COURSE of all the things to fall off and smash, it had to be a bottle of masking glue, and let me tell you that thing stinks.

When that was dealt with, my friend woke up and there was a lot of unawake texting and I started hyperfixating on a joint venture - all of this to say, I don't have the faculty to deal with my writing but you can have a look at the bits that are already there:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63019435/chapters/162232942

I dunno which chapter that is, help yourselves I guess I'm Undead.

I have two pieces of big news. One good and one I'm having a mild crisis over.

The good, I'm watching Nosferatu at a cinema tomorrow. At last, it's available where I am!

The crisis: my mum wants to watch it with me.

Serves me right for yapping at her about how ✨️artistic✨️ and ✨️unconventional ✨️ the film is. Weeeeeeelp.

Thank you, Tumblr, for showing me ads I absolutely don't want to see. I mean it in the most unironic way possible.

Maybe I'm a paranoid mediaeval minion, but I get absolutely horrified whenever an Internet platforms shows me ads featuring something I searched for just once, seconds ago, on another platform. It makes me feel stalked.

(Unimpressed cat is Daniel Meowlloy from my Interview with the Vampurr "Disregard!" comic)

Oh look who caught me on camera

Ignore Von McFangs in the corner, this isn't about him (who am I kidding, everything with him in it is about him)

Want to see his charming visage in colour? Look here

New chapter of Gothic Tales is up

Wanted to draw something but my holidays end tomorrow and I'm as motivated as an undead potato right now.

I've already got around 1,800 things to do in the first week back, it means I have to visit basically every office on campus and it's going to be absolute shite.

What's not shite, at least I hope not, is this fresh upload:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63019435/chapters/161671531

(I don’t know why the link looks like that, just my luck, my Internet is messing with me right now)

Anyway, enjoy a Frankenstein Monster having a crush that doubles as an existential crisis while I go and try not to turn into mash.

Today, I worked on my most disturbing writing project that, if illustrated, should look like this:

And then I walked past a mirror and realised that, I kid you not, I looked like this:

Fudging reindeer Christmas pyjama bottoms...

I should rebrand myself before people decide I'm the "last person you'd suspect"-type horror movie villain.

I used to be mad that my star sign's ruling planet is Jupiter because the god Jupiter is a bit of a cur, but LOOK! I made little stimming paws when I saw this!!

(Side note, no, Meta, I'm not using the fudging app, you sneaky little fopdoodle.)

(Reaction image is BBC Purrlock)

(Oh wait, I've actually drawn Jupiter/Zeus as a cat!!)

I forget my notebook in desk drawers with worrying frequency. If someone was to pick it up, I think THEY would also be rather worried too. Because it's either full of long essays from the void of my soul, or Mondays fit for sitcoms:

Or stuff like this:

I think you people may recognise some of these:

And there's also this:

(Auditory overload from people blabbering. I give people basilisk stares for talking near me)

I WILL BE BACK WITH ACTUAL DRAWINGS SOON, I SWEAR, JUST LET ME GATHER MY BRAIN CELL PIECES.

More POTO cats here and Van Helsing cats here.

There goes the vampurr with her coffin full of necessities ⚰️

I'm going on a trip! I'll probably be logged off for four days, but there's shenanigans queued up, so you'll still technically hear from me.

Feel free to clog up my inbox, I will be very happy to wade through them when I get back.

Catch you later!

Germs got me. The whole inside of my head, throat and chest feels inflamed. Like a vampurr who snorted garlic powder or something - I've lost my singular braincell, can't really be poetic.

Oh well, guilt-free bedrot and "Salem's Lot" audiobook. I'm not a fan of Stephen King, but vampire fiction is vampire fiction.

I'm not going to be up to much these days. I do have some weird drafts stored up, and if my brain comtinues to be so swollen, I might just post them.

How it feels to be writing right now.

Please, please, please stop talking so much, guys, we're too far over the word count already. Well. Serves me right for handing out POVs to everyone like cheap chocolates.

Is any of you good at deleting things? Or is it the universal plight of writers? Me, I'm not getting out of this without help or divine interference.

Prepare to be menaced by writing memes, I'm back at my nonsense writing these days.

I was making my characters miserable in my writing, and now I'm miserable (because of unrelated life things), so now I'm going to go back and wallow in said character's misery some more.

I'm sorry, Pierce, dear, I promise it will get better for us both.

Oh hey, if it isn't my old friend, existential crisis. Two days into the holidays, and it's already caught up to me.

Sometime during my existence, I developed the habit of kicking myself when I'm feeling down. This doodle is me trying to stop doing that, one faceplanting vampurr at a time.

I meant to draw my 'sucker for blood suckers' t-shirt, but miscalculations were made.

Silliness aside, being scatterbrained and fidgety is not the only trait of ADHD. When I read that rejection sensitive dysphoria is a part of the ADHD gift pack, I nearly punched the person next to me. That's the only way I can describe how gobsmacked I was. So much of my social problems come from not wanting to risk getting rejected - and my assumption that everyone reacts to rejections as badly.

Anyway, have a prehistoric taco fish.

I just started a new journal for the first time in years. Of course, I'm addressing my entries to Count Dracula.

I quote: 'let this Undead creature address her woes to a dead Undead who wouldn't care less if she was putrefying from coffin-rot (bed-rot).'

I had to find some way to amuse myself while trying to be my own therapist.

Message in a bottle.

I wanted to get this in writing and throw it into the void. It's either this or try to have a Victor Frankenstein-esque breakdown, which will take too much time and effort. So. This is my monologue about my melancholia and spite. Into the void it goes.

One of my professors was talking about how they think dropping courses shouldn't be an option and went on to tell a long tale of their own perseverance, how you must do things you don't like to achieve in life, why giving up means you're not trying.

And I was sitting there thinking that if I don't make Great Achievements in the future, my story would be told as a lesson. 'She was a bright student, but she couldn't take pressure and dropped out. All that potential, wasted. So stick to the path we've given you and go through with it no matter how much we stack the odds against you and how much you hate it.'

The most ridiculous part? If I do achieve their idea of success, they'll be saying how great it is to be yourself and how their wonderful, inclusive, tolerant system gives you the resources to follow your dreams.

Sometimes, I wish I'm not too weak of mind to take the chances I've been given. I wonder if I'm not struggling, just too soft and too vain to to proper hard work.

Then I try to remember that that's not me talking. That's the voice of people who don't know me and don't try to, talking in my head. The times I've been squashed down, the times I had to make myself small to fit in - all that is real, and it hurt me. None of the people who tell me I'm doing well saw when I was breaking down right under their noses. It's time to go.

It's not easy to choose according to your own judgement, especially when that judgement goes against the values of the people around you. There will be people who support you, if you're lucky, but you will have nobody to follow. And that's frightening. I hope I'll have the strength to say, I'll have it no other way.

I've read very few romance books because it's bad for my health. I swear it makes that one happy braincell in my brain start wheezing and sputtering for dear life.

One thing that gets my goat is those female leads who are trying to hard to be weird. The author wants them to be 'just a girl' but also 'not like other girls.' The love interest from It Ends With Us used that exact words 'You're not like the other girls' many times.

Author, that is a painfully normal - I won't say boring but oh look I just did - human being.

The message these romances are trying to send is: 'You can be weird and still get noticed by a tall, dark and handsome man with a high income (that last point is just coincidence because we don't care about money)!' But the message I'm receiving is: 'You can be weird in a conventionally understandable and acceptable way and still get noticed by...'

Because all of the 'weird' leads are exactly like the people around me who I never fit in with. So if THEY'RE weird, what does that make me? Frankenstein's Monster?

(This is not me comparing myself to the expectations set by the romance genre. This is me saying its portrayal of people is skewered.)

I challenge romance authors to be locked in a Gothic castle cellar with me. They won't use the phrase 'not like other girls' lightly after that.

Time to return to vampires and gloomy fog, I need a pick-me-up. Dracula, my friend, is it Zoo Theft today or Stupid Sunhat Day?

Someone challenged me to write a romance.

Call it my special brand of braincell torture, but I decided to take it further.

I shall try to write something sweet with a happy ending, with no gloomy-doomy self-inserts, no characters with 1,800 personal problems and absolutely no long discussions about the meaning of life, the justification of murder, love, loneliness, alienation, complicity, or suchlike.

Somebody help. I don't know how to write anymore.

I don't dare to say no vampires. Do you want me to be absolutely miserable?

Two very different vampires

Very nice, Pierce, but maybe don't flash your, ah, ankles. Dear Aurik is by @vladimirsangel

Originally, I only planned a doodle of smol Pierce next to Aurik because a midnight conversation turned from the division of chores in the Dracula household to vampire height difference. But it's been a weird week, and I kept adding to the sketches to unwind. I hope my 'stress art' makes some people happy, too.

On vamp fashion: Pierce's dressing gown is based on Klimt's The Kiss, reference to the Klimt-inspired robe in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Aurik is NOT a brat; he probably borrowed the t-shirt from Vlad. His outfit is a combination of this Goth one and his Ugg boots.

Phantom of the Opera (2004), we have beef!

(I'm sorry, Gerald Butler's Phantom, you're still very cool. See the original drawing without beef here.)

I'm not saying that the film is entirely bad. It's only that I tend to be extra critical about plot and portrayal. Phans of the film, feel tree to sit this one out. Now, the beef.

🥩 1. They cut out one of the most powerful scenes

Before I fell (or rather, was pushed) into the Phandom, I saw a clip of Sierra Buggess and Ramin Karimloo performing the 'SING!!!' part of The Phantom of the Opera, and even then, it struck me. Watching film, I was waiting to see it again... But they just kept rowing the boat. I find this direction choice rather symbolic of the angle of the entire film: they lowered the prominence of Christine's thrall to the Phantom's music and instead focused on their dubious romantic attraction.

🥩2. The Phantom's origin story

Perhaps they felt the need to explain his past more, but this is a case of the more you explain, the worse it gets. Why on earth would you feel the need to explain that the Phantom has been visiting Christine since she was a child? That is not only terrifying but also creates unnecessary confusion. If he's been teaching her for so long, I find it dubious that nobody has noticed her behaving strangely before the Hannibal performance.

🥩3. They gave Mme. Giry too many hats to wear

In the film Mme. Giry essentially took on the role of three characters: her own, the Persian's, and Mama Valeris' (Christine's surrogate mother in the book). Initially, I liked that they gave Mme. Giry a more active role in the Phantom's past, but then it gets very weird because she's essentially matchmaking her surrogate daughter with a man her own age whom she has witnessed killing someone. I mean, it's not implausible to give a character two conflicting roles, but the film gave no viable explanation for it.

🥩4. The graveyard duel

Why were they using rapiers in 1870? The Phantom dueling I can get behind, being the theatre kid he is, but Raoul? Get a pistol, monsieur le vicomte. Anachronism aside, this addition doesn't add more to the scene. It's meant to show how the Phantom tried to lure Christine again and Raoul comes to disillusion her, but with the duel added in, it's just a question of who wins the duel, who gets to leave with Christine. And I keep wondering how the heck the Phantom lost the fight in spite of his Magnificent Cloak advantage. (Cloaks were used as shields back in the day of rapier duels.)

🥩5. Carlotta

I adore Wendy Ferguson's Carlotta. I understand that the film wanted to make a contrast between Christine and Carlotta, but making her something out of Mean Girls was uncalled for. You got the wrong musical, mate.

I talk about other POTO adaptations here!

Vampire-themed sestina

Feedback accepted and appreciated. I don't bite. Honest. Inspired by the part in Dracula where Mina turns back to human when he dies, so here the vampire narrator ends their own life to set their lover free. Thanks to @academic-vampire for asking to read my writing and for introducing me to the format! You can read his sestina here.